The Badge Archive

The scouts are supposed to come up with the ideas based on the local community needs. GSUSA recommends finding a need in the community and then ask scouts to figure out what they could do to help.

In reality? Sometimes scout (and leaders!) need help knowing what could be possible to do.

While GSUSA recommends the TAPs be themed for the journey AND that scouts use what they learned in the journey to help them plan – GSUSA only requires that a TAP (any TAP) be done. And a TAP is defined as projects that “address the root cause of an issue, and come up with sustainable, longer-lasting solutions.” Usually this is done with making something permanent or education. If you can manage to change a rule or regulation, that is a TAP.

All themes are listed under age appropriate sections. Some are only appropriate with adult help, but it can be done. Some troops will find projects in the higher recommended levels they could easily do. It’s all about skill levels and resources. Some might find a project that is ideal for them in the lower level recommended list. No worries! Any TAP Idea is allowed.

Daisy

Take Action projects focus on simple, hands-on tasks that address a problem’s root cause through education or a physical, lasting change.

Animal Welfare

• Pet Care Posters: Create drawings that show how to feed, brush, and safely play with pets. Display these at a local library or school to teach others how to care for animals.
• Fleece Dog Toys: Braid strips of old fabric or socks into pull toys. This provides durable, recycled entertainment for shelter animals and reduces waste.
• Nesting Material Hangers: Fill mesh bags or repurposed whisk-style hangers with yarn, twigs, and dried grass. Hang them in a local park to help birds build stable nests.
• Shelter Caregiver Cards: Make “Thank You” cards for workers at a humane society to encourage staff retention and acknowledge the importance of their work.

Environment

• Garbage Can Placement: Install garbage can outdoors where there is none and find an organization that will maintain it
• “Leave No Trace” Signs: Create simple, visual signs (using pictures for non-readers) reminding people to pick up trash or turn off water. Place them in park bathrooms or near trailheads.
• Mini Butterfly Garden: Plant a small patch of native milkweed or flowers at the troop’s meeting place to create a permanent habitat for local insects.
• Reusable Bag Campaign: Decorate canvas grocery bags with drawings about the earth. Give them to family members or neighbors to encourage them to stop using single-use plastic.

Education

• STEM Fact Lunch Cards: Create small cards with a single STEM fact (e.g., “The moon has no wind”). Bag them and give them to a teacher to hand out during lunch to share STEM knowledge.
• Recycling Show-and-Tell: Perform a short skit or presentation for a school class explaining which items can be recycled and why it helps the earth.

Community Support

• Food Drive & Recipe Handout: Collect specific items like peanut butter and jelly for a food bank. Include a simple, illustrated “how-to” sheet for kids on how to make a sandwich.
• Pollinator Awareness Video: Record the troop explaining how to plant a flower and share the video with parents and local community groups to encourage home gardening.
• Community Garden Volunteering: Spend a morning pulling weeds or watering at a community garden, then create a poster for the garden’s entrance explaining why keeping the soil healthy matters.

Brownie

These scouts are capable of following scripts, organizing small collections, and using basic tools with supervision.

Animal Welfare

• Create a Pet Care/Safety Book: It could be about the care of a specific animal for the animal shelter to give new pet owners, or a general animal safety book to distribute to friends and family or at school.
• Help Animal Shelters: Make things for the local human society or animal shelter. See the DIY Animal Shelter page for ideas.
• Help Make Bat Boxes: Young scouts are usually too small for the heavy-duty assembly required for bat boxes (which are often heavy). They can help finish a pre-built box to help preserve it for outdoor use (with animal safe finish), or create grooves on the interior wood so bats’ tiny claws have something to grab onto.
• Make Birdhouses: Provide safe nesting spots for local birds whose natural habitats (hollow trees) are disappearing.
• Nesting Material Hangers: Fill mesh bags or repurposed whisk-style hangers with yarn, twigs, and dried grass. Hang them in a local park to help birds build stable nests.
• Promote Pet Adoption: Hand out cards or flyers in the neighborhood or at school explaining how to look at potential adoptees online at the local animal shelter. If the shelter does not have online bios for pets, arrange for the scouts to write a 2–3 sentence bio for the shelter website to attach to pet photos. Work with the shelter to have a page created.
• Shelter Caregiver Cards: Make “Thank You” cards for workers at a humane society to encourage staff retention and acknowledge the importance of their work.

Environment

• Call a Park Ranger: With a prepared script and adult supervision, a 2nd grader can call a park to ask, “What does your park need help with right now?”
  • Find a trail to do light clearing (picking up branches) or cleaning out old fire ash and restocking water buckets.
• Create Trail Signage: Provide a trail map with details on distance, etc. for the start of a local trail.
• Fire Starters: Create fire starters for new scout campers using wax paper and tinder. Create a fire safety handout to go with it for future campers to learn how to build a fire safely.
• Invasive Plant Removal & Video: Identify one specific local invasive plant. The scouts can help pull it and then record a short “how-to” video for their families explaining why that specific plant is a problem.
• Micro-Plastic Awareness: Spread the word about how bad the reusable plastic straws are for the earth (ocean life suffers, 30 years to biodegrade) by using 4-5 plastic straws and ironing them together in a row (using parchment paper) and creating bracelets (hole punched and tied with yarn) to distribute and wear to strike up the conversation.
  • Design a trash interceptor prototype and create a challenge card or short video to share with other troops, demonstrating how to stop land litter from reaching the ocean.
• Native Seed Bombs: Make Seed bombs. Distribute these in approved community areas to support local pollinators like bees and butterflies.
• Rain Collection Handouts: Have the scouts decorate rain barrels for family or friends that can be installed in their yards. Give them a list of different ways to use rain water and how they’re helping the Earth.

Education

• Engineering Themed Bookmarks: Design bookmarks with a science facts and a STEM book recommendation for the school library to distribute.
  • One troop read “engineering” library books and had the scouts make a little “recommendation” poster for the book they read. The library displayed the posters for a few weeks.
  • One scout found books in her school library about women in science and asked the Librarian to host a display of these books. She made a poster with her top five to go with the display.
  • One troop made posters showing what different engineers they learned about do. Then displayed them at the library.
• Future Daisy Encouragement: Draw pictures and record a short video or write a simple letter for next year’s incoming Kindergarteners. This helps the new troop feel welcome and understand what to expect.
• Popsicle Stick Catapult Kits: Assemble the components for a kit (sticks, rubber bands, bottle caps). Write or draw a simple “how-to” guide to teach others about the design process or teach others how to do so using the kits.
• Recipe Pamphlets: Create a simple trifold or handout with 3–4 easy recipes even a kid could make.

Community Support

• Commercial Creation: Make a commercial about something kids their age should focus on to make the community better. (Make sure face and identifying marks don’t show). Share it on social media and ask friends to share too. Hang a poster at a library, school or even your home with a QR link to the video.
• Promote Citizen Science: Do a presentation at a school’s parents’ night about why citizen science is important. Showcase a few citizen science projects that are particularly fun and easy for families to do together.
• Public Service Announcement (PSA): Write a short, 30-second script about a topic like hunger. The scouts can read it for a local radio station or record it as a “podcast” for the school.
• Skits and Short Plays: Based on a book they read together, the scouts can perform a 5-minute play for a younger class or their parents to teach a lesson (like animal safety or engineering).

Junior

Shifts from doing a one-time activity to creating real sustainable change. Focus on building physical structures, conducting research, and teaching younger peers.

Animal Welfare

• Cat Scratching Pads: Use leftover cardboard cookie cases to create scratching pads for local shelters to reduce waste and provide enrichment for sheltered animals.
• Make Bat Boxes: Assist in the assembly required for bat boxes.
• Tic Tubes for Park Rangers: Create and stock Tick Tubes (cardboard tubes filled with treated cotton) for park rangers to distribute, helping to reduce the tick population in public hiking areas.

Environment

• Bottle Cap Mural: Collect plastic bottle caps to create a permanent mural at a school or park, then give a presentation to younger students about the importance of keeping plastic out of the ocean.
• Community Clean-Up Scavenger Hunt: Gamify litter collection by creating a checklist of specific items for participants to find (e.g., “something recyclable,” “a bottle cap,” or “plastic film”), educating peers on waste categories while cleaning a local park or school grounds.
• Goose Deterrents: Build and install non-harmful deterrents (decoys, pinwheels, or flashy streamers) at local beaches to keep public swimming areas clean and safe.
• Rain Barrels & Gardens: Install rain barrels at a community building and plant a full-scale pollinator or butterfly garden to manage stormwater and support local insects.
• Trail Erosion & Mapping: Perform trail erosion maintenance (creating water bars or stabilized steps) and map out the trails to create a permanent hiking guide or digital map for a local camp.

Education

• Algorithm Education: Create a video or live-action movie explaining algorithms using everyday examples like baking or planting. Share the video with school administrators for use in classrooms.
• Hidden Figures Display: Research “hidden figures” (unsung women in science or local history) and create a permanent display for a library or community center.
• Tech Research: Research how people use code to help others and create a slideshow or animated movie to present at a school assembly or library event.

Community Support

• Buddy Benches: Design, build, and install “buddy benches” on school playgrounds to help lonely children find friends and foster a more inclusive school environment. Call before starting to make sure a buddy bench is needed and allowed.
• Little Free Library: Build and install a Little Free Library in a neighborhood that lacks easy access to books, and arrange for a specific person or organization to maintain it.
  • One scout did so in 2014 in Morely, NY
• Care Packages (Jared Boxes): Organize the creation of Jared Boxes (toy-filled bins) for chronically ill children in hospitals, including age-appropriate games and encouraging notes.
• Pillow Drive: Collect new pillows and hand-make or tie-dye pillowcases for children in the foster care system to provide comfort during transitions. Celebrate International Pillow Fight Day to promote awareness.

Cadette

Projects should center on sustainability (making sure the project continues without them) and advocacy (influencing leaders to change rules or laws).

Animal Welfare

• Create Butterfly Houses: Research the specific dimensions and placement needed for local species to thrive.
• Make Duck Houses: Design and build specific habitats for ducks.
• Mason Bee Campaign: Build and install mason bee houses and create a flyer explaining why these non-stinging bees are vital for local food growth.

Environment

• Bike Routes & Trains: Research and map out a safe bike route to school. Organize a “bike train” day where adult volunteers escort a group of students to school on their bikes to promote health and reduce traffic.
• Holiday-Themed Runs: Organize a large-scale community event, such as a “Zombie Run” or holiday 5K, to raise awareness for a specific cause and create a digital guide for others to host it in the future.
  • The Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois held a Zombie Run in 2013.
• Storm Drain Advocacy: Create a poster and social media campaign for a local faith community or school to educate neighbors about the dangers of dumping chemicals into storm drains.

Education

• Citizen Science Day: Organize a town-wide Citizen Science Day. Set up stations with materials and instructions for different projects (like bird counting or water testing) and teach participants how to upload data to national databases.
• Coding Club: Create a lunchtime or recess coding club for girls. Develop a curriculum using tangrams or functional suncatchers to teach algorithms, and train a younger student to lead it after you graduate.
• “Daisy Days” Events: If your community lacks events for younger scouts, organize a “Daisy Day” and create a “Playbook” so that future troops can easily replicate the event every year.
• Recurring Activity Programs: Set up a recurring activity or workshop for children or seniors at a shelter and find a local group or club that will agree to maintain the schedule for several years.

Community Support

• “No Idling” Policy: Research the environmental impact of car exhaust and make a formal presentation to the school board or city council to establish “No Idling” zones at school drop-off areas.
• Op-Eds & Letters: Write an op-ed for a local newspaper or a letter to the editor of a magazine regarding a community problem, offering a specific, researched solution.
• Public Speaking & Presentations: Make a formal presentation to a school principal or city council regarding a community need, such as improved lighting in a park or a new crosswalk.
• Shelter Maintenance: Provide major maintenance for a community center or shelter, such as painting rooms or improving landscaped areas, and create a maintenance schedule for the facility manager to follow.
• Sustainable Food Drive: Organize a local food drive and partner with a local organization (like a PTO or church) that signs a formal agreement to continue the drive annually.

Senior & Ambassador

Projects can be changing a law, establishing a permanent program, or influencing public policy to ensure the solution lasts for years.

Animal Welfare

• Advocacy for Animals: Research local ordinances regarding “tethering” (keeping dogs on chains), “puppy mills,” or exotic animal ownership. Organize a formal petition drive and present a researched proposal to your City Council to update or strengthen local animal protection laws.
• Humane Education Curriculum: Collaborate with a local school district or after-school program to develop and integrate a permanent animal welfare and safety module into their curriculum. Train staff or older student mentors to deliver the lessons every year.
• Low-Cost Clinic Establishment: Partner with local veterinarians and a non-profit sponsor to establish a permanent, recurring low-cost spay/neuter or vaccination clinic. Create a logistical manual and secure a long-term administrative partner to ensure the clinic continues annually.
• Service Animal Policy Awareness: Develop a comprehensive educational toolkit for local business owners regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and service animal rights. Work with the local Chamber of Commerce to include this toolkit in their permanent resources for new businesses.
• Shelter Intake Reform: Partner with a local animal shelter to research and implement a “Diversion Program” that provides resources (like food or behavioral training) to struggling pet owners to prevent them from surrendering their pets. Document the process to create a permanent program manual for the shelter.
• Wildlife Corridor Protection: Work with city planners or environmental agencies to identify areas where local wildlife frequently cross roads. Advocate for the installation of permanent “Wildlife Crossing” infrastructure or signage and create a public awareness campaign to reduce animal-vehicle collisions.

Education

• Awareness Events: Organize a concert, poetry slam, or art exhibit to raise awareness about a social issue. Create a formal event planning committee within a school or community center to ensure the event becomes an annual tradition.
• Digital Resource Development: Build a permanent website, mobile app, or blog that provides resources on a specific issue, such as mental health or STEM education, and coordinate with a school or library to host and update the link.
• Skill-Building Workshops: Partner with a local business or organization to design and lead a workshop (e.g., coding, car care, budgeting, or healthy living). Create a curriculum and “train-the-trainer” guide so the partner organization can continue the workshop annually.
• Video Tutorial Series: Produce a professional-grade series of video tutorials teaching a specific skill (e.g., robotics or home repair) and distribute them to community centers or schools as a permanent educational resource.

Environment

• Cafeteria Policy Reform: Lobby school board members and cafeteria administrators to change official procurement rules, ensuring a permanent shift toward healthier, sustainable food and drink options in the district.
• Food Rescue Coordination: Research local food waste and contact grocery stores, hospitals, schools, and restaurants to establish a formal food rescue program. Develop a logistical process for diverting edible food to shelters and secure a long-term commitment from a local delivery partner.

Community Support

• Community Resource Funding: Make a formal presentation to city officials to suggest specific improvements, such as a playground swing for children with disabilities, and offer a cost-sharing plan using troop funds to initiate the build.
• Legislative Advocacy: Identify a local or state law that contributes to a community problem. Start a petition drive, organize an email campaign, and testify at a town hall meeting or legislative hearing to advocate for a specific change in the law.
• Public Safety Infrastructure: Conduct research on local traffic accidents or pedestrian risks. Present your findings to the city council to advocate for permanent physical improvements like stoplights, sidewalks, or bridges.
• Public Safety Programs: Coordinate with state highway patrol to establish “Wake-up Stands” at rest areas during high-traffic holiday weekends. Create a logistics manual and secure a permanent sponsor (like a local coffee shop) to ensure the program continues every year.
  • Here’s one troop that got permission to do something in 2012: Girl Scouts Helping Drivers.
• Tutoring Center Establishment: Partner with multiple troops and local organizations to set up an after-school tutoring center at a homeless shelter. Create a volunteer rotation schedule and a “Sustainability Agreement” with the shelter to keep the center running long-term.

Service Projects!

These are great to do, but don’t technically qualify for a TAP. Some troops enjoy using a patch program to encourage doing good in the world – like the Center Service Patch and picking Segments you can place around them from Advantage Emblem.

• Make placemats for Meals on Wheels. This would be a good project for Daisies to do. Could also be for an adult daycare or rest home.
• Red Cross Comfort Kits. Collect personal hygiene items for Red Cross comfort kits.
• Cook or serve food at a shelter or drop-in center.
• Coordinate a supplies drive for a shelter or center such as blankets, towels, books, etc. (speak with a shelter or center first to receive permission and find out the needs)
• Help someone in the community with picking up leaves
• Collect Comfort Cases for kids in foster care. Collect small suitcases, duffel Bags or backpacks with PJs, stuffed animals, coloring books and crayons, personal hygiene, and other items.
• Socks of Love. Fill warm socks for the homeless with toiletry necessities.
• Birthday packets for nursing homes. Fill a bag with birthday hat, party blower, tissue packet and hand-made card. Have nursing home staff give to residents on their birthdays.
• Birthday-in-a-Bag. Talk to a local homeless shelter or food bank about donating Birthday-in-a-Bag collections for young children. Fill a large gift bag with: cake mix, frosting, foil cake pan, cake decorations, candles, balloons, plates, napkins, small unisex toy or present (unwrapped), and wrapping paper and ribbon. Some scouts have done this as a way to celebrate Juliette Low’s birthday.
• Bedtime Bags for children at shelters, or going into foster care: Each bag has a stuffed animal, a blanket, a book, and a toothbrush.
• Serve at a soup line or shelter and have lunch with someone who is homeless
• Collect grocery store coupons to donate to food service programs
• Organize a food drive before Thanksgiving
• Donate toiletries to a homeless shelter
• Sing songs at an assisted living home
• Volunteer to serve food at a homeless shelter
• Sort and pack food at a food shelf or food bank.
• Help out with special events such as large food drives
• Put together “I Care” kits that include toothpaste, brush, shampoo, etc. for shelter clients (speak with a shelter or center first to receive permission and find out the needs).
• Help with administrative duties such as mailings, promotions, etc.
• Park or creek clean ups. Check around your neighborhood or local parks. Many of these may have annual or semi-annual clean up events organized by local environmental or community groups, particularly around Earth Day (April 20th).
• Food or clothing drive. Hold a drive to collect food or clothing items for a local food bank or homeless shelter. We’ve had Daisies do this very enthusiastically. They first visited a local food bank to see what it was all about and what they needed. The food bank had a large scale, which the girls all hopped on to weigh themselves. We used their total weight as our goal (~800 lbs) for how much we want to collect that year. The girls collected during school events, asking everyone who attended to bring in canned good and other non-perishable food items and personal hygiene supplies).
• Book drive. Collect books, particularly children’s books to give to local children that may not have books to read over the summer.
• Donate toys to a children’s hospital

If you have an idea that isn’t on the list of things below – drop them in the comment section! This list could be endless and we’d love to add to it.

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For More Fun Ideas and Plans

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Click Here -> To see information References:

Disclaimer: The information published on The Badge Archive is built from the references listed below. These sources demonstrate that our content is grounded in facts and research, not opinion or speculation. Readers may consult them directly when looking for additional material.

• Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. “A Take Action Guide for Volunteers.” Girlscouts.org, 2014, https://my.girlscouts.org/content/dam/girlscouts-vtk/global/resource/Take-Action-Guide-for-Volunteers.pdf. Accessed 13 Dec. 2024.

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